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This book brings a fresh perspective to three wars the United
States fought in Asia between 1941 and 1975 - the Pacific War, the
Korean War, and the Vietnam War - by focusing on the human
dimension of war as experienced by those, on all sides, who fought,
lived through, and later remembered them. The complex relationship
between history and memory is brought to bear on analyses of
cultural artifacts and productions including novels, films, short
stories, and poems that derive from or evoke war. Even though the
cultural approach concerns itself with the local and the particular
rather than with the abstract and universal, it is inherently
comparative. Moreover, it also relocates each war in the historical
and cultural experiences of Asian countries themselves rather than
seeing the war as merely a conflict between the United States and
Asian nations. This volume is meant to encourage readers,
especially in a teaching environment, to develop an understanding
of the experience of war in Asia that is variegated, fragmented,
and complex, like the wars themselves.
Mao Zedong was one of the most important figures of the twentieth
century, the most important in the history of modern China. A
complex figure, he was both a champion of the poor and a brutal
tyrant, a poet and a despot. In this major new biography, the
authors draw upon extensive Russian documents previously
unavailable to reveal surprising details about Mao's rise to power,
his leadership in China, and the true nature of his relationship
with Stalin.
Mao brought his country from poverty and economic backwardness into
the modern age and onto the world stage. But he was also
responsible for an unprecedented loss of life during the disastrous
Great Leap Forward and the bloody Cultural Revolution. He lived and
behaved as China's last emperor.
"Mao" is the full story of Mao's life and rule told as never
before.
An extensively researched, comprehensive biography of Chinese
Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, one of the twentieth
century’s most powerful and controversial figures  Chiang
Kai-shek (1887–1975) led the Republic of China for almost fifty
years, starting in 1926. He was the architect of a new, republican
China, a hero of the Second World War, and a faithful ally of the
United States. Simultaneously a Christian and a Confucian, Chiang
dreamed of universal equality yet was a perfidious and cunning
dictator responsible for the deaths of over 1.5 million innocent
people. Â This critical biography is based on Chiang
Kai-shek’s unpublished diaries, his extensive personal files from
the Russian archives, and the Russian files of his relatives,
associates, and foes. Alexander V. Pantsov sheds new light on the
role played by the Russians in Chiang’s rise to power in the
1920s and throughout his political career—and indeed the Russian
influence on the Chinese revolutionary movement as a whole—as
well as on Chiang’s complex relationship with top officials of
the United States. It is a detailed portrait of a man who ranks
with Stalin, Roosevelt, Hitler, Churchill, and Gandhi as leaders
who shaped our world.
This collection of documents, sealed for years in Stalin's secret
archives, gathers some of Karl Bernhardovich Radek's most important
contributions to the early Soviet debates about China and its
working-class. Radek (1885-1939) was the foremost Soviet specialist
on China, a leading activist in the Russian revolutionary movement,
and a leader of the Trotskyist Opposition. In these letters,
articles, and minutes he presents an original conception of the
history of China from ancient times to the twentieth century, as
well as a delineation of the fundamental political problems of
China in the 1920s. The appendices also contain communications
between Trotsky and Radek, as well as the "Chronological
Information" of Zionviev and Trotsky, outlining the most important
stages of the struggle of the United Left Opposition against the
Stalinist majority in the All-Union Commuist Party regarding
problems of the first Chinese revolution. None of the documents
collected here have ever been published in English.
This text examines the Pacific War, the Korean War and the Vietnam
War, from the perspective of those who fought the wars and lived
through them. The relationship between history and memory informs
the book, and each war is relocated in the historical and cultural
experiences of Asian countries.
Deng Xiaoping joined the Chinese Communist movement as a youth and
rose in its ranks to become an important lieutenant of Mao's from
the 1930s onward. Two years after Mao's death in 1976, Deng became
the de facto leader of the Chinese Communist Party and the prime
architect of China's post-Mao reforms. Abandoning the Maoist
socio-economic policies he had long fervently supported, he set in
motion changes that would dramatically transform China's economy,
society, and position in the world. Three decades later, we are
living with the results. China has become the second largest
economy and the workshop of the world. And while it is essentially
a market economy ("socialism with Chinese characteristics"), Deng
and his successors ensured the continuation of CCP rule by severely
repressing the democratic movement and maintaining an iron grip on
power. When Deng died at the age of 92 in 1997, he had set China on
the path it is following to this day. Alexander Pantsov and Steven
Levine's new biography of Deng Xiaoping does what no other
biography has done: based on newly discovered documents, it covers
his entire life, from his childhood and student years to the
post-Tiananmen era. Thanks to unprecedented access to Russian
archives containing massive files on the Chinese Communist Party,
the authors present a wealth of new material on Deng dating back to
the 1920s. In a long and extraordinary life, Deng navigated one
epic crisis after another. Born in 1904, Deng, like many Asian
revolutionary leaders, spent part of the 1920s in Paris, where he
joined the CCP in its early years. He then studied in the USSR just
as Stalin was establishing firm control over the Soviet communist
party. He played an increasingly important role in the troubled
decades of the 1930s and 1940s that were marked by civil war and
the Japanese invasion. He was commissar of a communist-dominated
area in the early 1930s, loyal henchman to Mao during the Long
March, regional military commander in the anti-Japanese war, and
finally a key leader in the 1946-49 revolution. During Mao's
quarter century rule, Deng oscillated between the heights and the
depths of power. He was purged during the Cultural Revolution, only
to reemerge after Mao's death to become China's paramount leader
until his own death in 1997. This objective, balanced, and
unprecedentedly rich biography changes our understanding of one of
the most important figures in modern history.
Although conventionally treated as separate, America's four wars in
Asia were actually phases in a sustained U.S. bid for regional
dominance, according to Michael H. Hunt and Steven I. Levine. This
effort unfolded as an imperial project in which military power and
the imposition of America's political will were crucial. Devoting
equal attention to Asian and American perspectives, the authors
follow the long arc of conflict across seventy-five years from the
Philippines through Japan and Korea to Vietnam, tracing along the
way American ambition, ascendance, and ultimate defeat. They show
how these wars are etched deeply in eastern Asia's politics and
culture. The authors encourage readers to confront the imperial
pattern in U.S. history with implications for today's Middle
Eastern conflicts. They also offer a deeper understanding of
China's rise and Asia's place in today's world. For instructors: An
Online Instructor's Manual is available, with teaching tips for
using Arc of Empire in graduate and undergraduate courses on
America's wars in Asia. It includes lecture topics, chronologies,
and sample discussion questions.
Deng Xiaoping joined the Chinese Communist movement as a youth and
rose in its ranks to become an important lieutenant of Mao's from
the 1930s onward. Two years after Mao's death in 1976, Deng became
the de facto leader of the Chinese Communist Party and the prime
architect of China's post-Mao reforms. Abandoning the Maoist
socio-economic policies he had long fervently supported, he set in
motion changes that would dramatically transform China's economy,
society, and position in the world. Three decades later, we are
living with the results. China has become the second largest
economy and the workshop of the world. And while it is essentially
a market economy ("socialism with Chinese characteristics"), Deng
and his successors ensured the continuation of CCP rule by severely
repressing the democratic movement and maintaining an iron grip on
power. When Deng died at the age of 92 in 1997, he had set China on
the path it is following to this day. Alexander Pantsov and Steven
Levine's new biography of Deng Xiaoping does what no other
biography has done: based on newly discovered documents, it covers
his entire life, from his childhood and student years to the
post-Tiananmen era. Thanks to unprecedented access to Russian
archives containing massive files on the Chinese Communist Party,
the authors present a wealth of new material on Deng dating back to
the 1920s. In a long and extraordinary life, Deng navigated one
epic crisis after another. Born in 1904, Deng, like many Asian
revolutionary leaders, spent part of the 1920s in Paris, where he
joined the CCP in its early years. He then studied in the USSR just
as Stalin was establishing firm control over the Soviet communist
party. He played an increasingly important role in the troubled
decades of the 1930s and 1940s that were marked by civil war and
the Japanese invasion. He was commissar of a communist-dominated
area in the early 1930s, loyal henchman to Mao during the Long
March, regional military commander in the anti-Japanese war, and
finally a key leader in the 1946-49 revolution. During Mao's
quarter century rule, Deng oscillated between the heights and the
depths of power. He was purged during the Cultural Revolution, only
to reemerge after Mao's death to become China's paramount leader
until his own death in 1997. This objective, balanced, and
unprecedentedly rich biography changes our understanding of one of
the most important figures in modern history.
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